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Re:Status Bar

[Originally posted by Chris Carta]

The fact that forms load so fast, and that the point (I guess) would be to limit the users, I would go with the approach of disabling buttons / controls.ÿ In addition, you can use the form's .caption property to show that you're loading.ÿ On the other hand, progress bars are always nice for the end user to know that things are actually happening.

Nothing wrong with a status bar, but it's text.ÿ The text might be changing so fast that no one can read it.

I'm curious...how long do some of these forms you're thinking of take to load?

Re:Re:Status Bar

[Originally posted by XTC]

I am running an engineering application with Vb as the UI and loading some of the Engineering apps/drawings take about 30secs to a minute. The progress bar is what i should use. I just want the users to know that the computer is working and they are not clicking around to find out.

Re:Re:Re:Status Bar

[Originally posted by Chris Carta]

ok...I would then suggest both status bar and progress bar.ÿ The point with the status bar and text messages is that it is a great help in debugging a load problem.ÿ The progress bar is eye candy and a help to the end user.

Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Status Bar

[Originally posted by Chris Carta]

For each form that has to load, find the critical points.ÿ Name them.ÿ As portions load, identify them in the status bar. (i.e., "Loading graph LD data...").ÿ When each section is done, use the status bar again... (i.e., "Graph LD load complete...")

As far as the progress bar, you must pick the values in relation to what you know about the load process...

Where do you think the 50% mark is?
Maybe it'll be easier to use 20%, 40%, 60%, 80%... as your bench marks.ÿ Don't worry if they're not exact, they're just to show things are happening.

What I like to do with progress bars on non-linear processes is to have a 'master' progress bar (the entire process) and a 'sub' progress bar (below it) for each step.

So, if there are 5 main steps, the Status bar indicates in words what's happening.
The 'sub' progress bar will go (upon your coding) from 1 to 100 on that step.ÿ When the 'sub' progress bar is done, the 'master' progress bar will be 20% closer to 100% (and the 'sub' progress bar will go back to 0% ready for the next step).